Finding the hidden God in life

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During the Christmas novena here in Chontal, I ran into a friend and asked where her little son was. “He’s in bed.” What happened. She laughed. “He at the entire Christmas bag of candies that he got from the school, and it made his stomach sick.” The next day, I saw the little boy. What…

One of the greatest builders of the ancient world in the time of Jesus had a whole slew of projects, and probably none greater than the updating and augmenting of the Temple in Jerusalem. It was a massive overhaul and renovation of the Temple which was rebuilt about 500 years earlier, after the original built…

Today is the World Day of Peace. What is peace? There’s the peace sign and the lack of war and fighting. I see peace salutations in emails from people sometimes. We have a part of the Mass where we give everyone a sign of peace. What is peace? For the Israelites, having a first-born son…

A few weeks ago, I watched a movie about a woman who suddenly was faced with a crisis. She had a successful career and a great marriage when she found out that her husband decided to divorce her. He had been having an affair for a number of years. He also got the house and…

In the small villages of Ecuador, wherever there is a chapel or a church, there are always bells. They don’t ring them out in the day to indicate noontime or 6pm, like they do in the States. That’s what we use them for. But we’ve lost the real use for them: indicating the starts of…

When I arrived for my first year-long stay in Ecuador, I started in a parish participating in different ways, and at one point I was teaching the parish’s religious education teachers. My Spanish was still growing, but I realized that I didn’t need much language to teach the class. I would introduce the theme at…

College. My family didn’t have all that much money, so I was happy when I got a good sized academic scholarship to go to a wealthy college in Pennsylvania. In the first days, while all the other kids had their parents driving them and moving them in, I arrived alone fresh out of tipping a…